Podcast + iTunes = Pretty Neat

Just a little note about the new Podcasts feature in iTunes: it’s really cool. For a while now, I’ve been listening to Leo Laporte’s KFI Radio Podcast, so it really interested me when I found that I could plug in his podcast link into iTunes, and it worked! Really well!!

I didn’t like the way that programs like iPodderX and NewsFire handled everything, since it was cluttered, and didn’t feel very Mac-like in my mind, for various reasons. But iTunes ties it all together, and makes it simple. (Hmm. Maybe that’s what, subconsiously, I didn’t like about the other programs)

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If you aren’t familiar with Podcasts, or are curious about this whole thing, try these steps:
1. Download the new iTunes (of course)
2. In the Advanced menu, click on the “Subscribe to Podcast…”
3. In the field that pops up, put in the URL for your favorite podcast. Or, if you don’t know of one, just try Leo Laporte’s – http://feeds.feedburner.com/kfi
4. Press Okay. Obviously.
5. You’ll see the podcast link in the Podcasts page (under the Library page link in the Sources list)
6. Just click or press play to hear the episode of the podcast that you select.

It’s really nice to be able to listen to a radio show or something that you wouldn’t otherwise hear. Apple provides many of the higher-quality feeds from their Music Store, in a new “Podcast” section. Check it out.

I have had nothing but problems so far with podcasting. I try to subscribe to podcasts from NPR and get complaints that there are no shows available, or that the URL is malformed, etc. But I’m hopeful these glitches will shake out.
On a side note, I tried to report an error message and found I could not copy and paste the text of the error message from the dialog box. Whose grand idea was that? You used to be able to do that in OS X… sigh. Another example of how little attention Apple pays to interface detail any more.

I don’t get what that author’s argument is. He says that he likes podcasts and the freedom they bring, but then he says that offering that freedom to people causes problems.

It may be problems in other implementations, but iTunes seems to be done well enough, even though it’s already so huge! If a program like Musicmatch were to have the volume of features that iTunes has, and its complexity, it would be really messy and confusing. But not iTunes. Like most of the other apps that Apple makes, it’s really well done. Even some of my Windows-using friends like iTunes better than the other apps on their computers. As long as Apple doesn’t get too arrogant (which Steve Jobs has a problem with), then their design and style is what will separate them from other computer makers like Dell.

Podcasting wrapped in to iTunes in a painless, easy to use method, is a great thing, donâ€™t get me wrong. However, it just creates more crap. Allowing anyone who wants to, regardless of their knowledge/skill to do something just asks for more junk. I mean, there is a lot of good, high-quality podcasts, however, the fact that it is so easy to put this stuff out here results in a lot of junk that no one really wants

E-mail? Hmm. Josh will probably get that soon, but he’s busy throughout the day here, so if you sent it recently, it may take him a bit to get back to you. Check your email later on. But if that’s what the e-mail is about, I’d say “cool idea”. I don’t know how easy/difficult it would be to get such a thing off of the ground. (Leo Laporte’s podcasts have a lot of his knowledge and money behind it, neither of which we’d have anything close to). Skype sounds like a good idea by which to do something like that. But, of course, there’s a lot of stuff we’d have to do to make something like that work. I don’t even have a microphone or headset yet!

In fact, as I’m typing this, I’m listening to his show, where he’s talking about the stuff they bought for TWiT, which he says the “kit put us back about a thousand bucks”. So that has kind of made me cringe.

Thanks for your comments, always willing to take up cool ideas like that.

Yeah, I love it. There were some problems with the TWiT Cast (leo laportes other podcast) where it would download different versions of the podcast, like the latest one came down in the low quality but then the next episode came down in high quality.. Not sure what is going on with that but hopefully it will be fixed.

I sent an email to you guys but I havent heard anything back and now that you are posting about podcasts, I will just post it here too.

Basically all it said was that I think that the apple blog should get a podcast going too. Like every week or so you guys all talk on skype about the latest apple stuff or things like that. Oh yeah and maybe have a few guests on there too :).